Dishonour Among Thieves Page 9

  “We’ve nothing against any of your men, so far as we know,” rejoined Bord, “and our inquiry isn’t confined to the men here. We’re pursuing inquiries right through the valley and the whole rural district. There’s one chap we want to get a line on, and it’s possible he may be employed here, but we don’t know. Mr. Staple here could identify the man if he saw him.”

  “He’s a youngish chap, thirty-five or so,” said Staple. “He was always called Carrots. He’s got hair that’s as bright as flame, real shining red, and the hair on his arms and chest is red, his eyes are brownish-red and he’s a hefty fellow, huge shoulders, and a bit bandy about the legs.”

  Wharton turned to Lawley. “You know the chaps better than I do, Bob. Have we got a redhead among them?” Lawley shook his head. “No, not one that fits Mr. Staple’s description. Most of the blokes are dark: there’s a few mouse-coloured and a couple of tow-headed chaps. Rather funny, I had a word with Dr. Morse when he was up here when we had that Asian ’flu. He was saying that Englishmen are regarded as a fair-headed race and he quoted that bit in the history books about Angles and angels, if you mind that one. Englishmen have changed since those days, he says. Look at your lot, a typical set of toughs, they’re nearly all dark-headed—and it’s true. That’s why I’m so sure we haven’t got a redhead, like the fellow you describe. We had one about a year ago, I don’t mind his name, but he was no good. Wouldn’t put his back into the job and was everlastingly grumbling. He gave the job up and walked out on us before he’d worked his contract time, so he lost his bonus. We pay our hands a bonus at the end of their agreement, it helps to keep them on the job. It’s often a perishing wretched job, especially in winter, and an incentive helps.”

  Bord nodded. “Thanks very much, Mr. Lawley. That’s a capital piece of evidence, and I’d like a further word with you later about your redheaded chap.” He turned to Wharton. “Now what I’d like, if you can arrange it, is a chance for Mr. Staple and me to see all your men. I take it they’ll be in camp now. Could you parade them so that we could have a look at them?”

  “Now, look here, Inspector; it’s up to every responsible man to help the police,” replied Wharton, “but think things out a bit. This isn’t the Army, you know, and I’m not in the position of a commanding officer. I’m a manager and it’s my business to keep the gangs on the job, and the contract finished to time. To do that, I’ve got to keep the men in good heart, contented with conditions here and so forth. Now while they’re working, there’s got to be discipline, as Lawley told you about the blasting job. The men have to take orders from the overseers and by and large that’s acknowledged. The majority of the men have been working for the company on other projects and they know the regulations are for their safety as well as for keeping the job moving. But when the day’s work is over, our men are free, just like other working men. They feed in the canteen and sleep in the huts because it suits them that way. Except at weekends, there’s no transport to take them to a town, and this place is a perishing long way away from anywhere. They may like pubs and cinemas, but they don’t want to tramp best part of twenty miles there and back over the fells after a heavy day’s work, so they stay around the camp. We’ve got a cinema projector in the big hut, and a TV and radio, and they settle down contentedly enough. But their time’s their own in the evenings and apart from a bit of supervision to see that there’s no rowdyism or smashing things up, we don’t interfere.”

  “Yes, I see your point,” said Bord; “but you’ve got the authority to ask them to file past, I take it? You can give any reason you like.”

  “Don’t you go thinking they’re simple,” retorted Wharton. “They’re not. They know, more or less, what happened over yonder at High Garth. Turner, the canteen lorry driver, told them, and the reaction was, ‘Now we shall have the cops up here, trying to pin something on us.’ They will have seen you arrive. By the way, did you leave a man in charge of your car?”

  “Yes, I did,” rejoined Bord. “I’m not that simple myself.”

  Wharton nodded. “Well, then, you can guess how their minds work, Inspector. They’ll have seen your car and they’ll know it’s a police car and they’ll have said: ‘There you are: here are cops, trying to prove we put paid to the bloke they found. We’re working chaps and we’re all from away, so it’s got to be us.’ And if you’d left your car with no one in charge, you might have found it upside down when you went to drive home. I’m not trying to make out that the men are potential criminals, far from it. They’re a decent set of chaps so far as working goes. We’ve had no trouble, barring a few deserters who couldn’t face the hard work and the weather, but once they get the idea that the police are making a beeline for them when a crime’s been committed, they’ll resent it, and once they feel they’re not being treated fairly, they’ll get difficult.” Wharton paused a moment “You want me to ‘parade them,’ as you call it,” he went on, “order them to file past so that you can have a look at them. If I give that order, some may oblige, but others won’t. Some of them may take it into their heads to go out over the fell. I’ve no means of knowing if any of our toughs have ever been in the hands of the police: if they have, they’ll be the chaps who won’t oblige. They just won’t be there when they’re wanted. If you want to have a look at them, why not wait till morning, when you can see them as they leave the huts, and there won’t be any bother?”

  “If there’s anybody here I want, tomorrow may be too late,” persisted Bord.

  “Following the same argument, it’s already too late,” persisted Wharton; “but remember this: you can’t charge any of our chaps with assault if the assault was committed this afternoon,” he went on. “We’ve told you that we can answer for the men this afternoon; and, as for the business of a man whose body you found in the farmhouse, you said he’d been dead for months. If any of the gangers on this job had had a hand in that, they wouldn’t have stayed on here waiting for the body to be found.”

  “That’s sense,” said Staple. “Now, see here, Inspector, 1 came up here to see if I could help you by recognising carroty Sam. I follow what Mr. Wharton meant when he said, ‘This isn’t the Army,’ and you can’t order free blokes around like you can the troops.”

  “Yes, yes, I follow that and I don’t want to make difficulties or raise a riot,” said Bord; “but I want to know if all your hands are in the camp. Can you get that question answered?”

  “I’ll see to it,” put in Lawley. “If you’d insisted on having your way, Inspector, marching ’em past, we’d have had trouble, sure enough, but since you’re meeting us, seeing our difficulties, I’ll do my best to help you. I’ll go round the huts and I’ll get Walton-to help me. We can talk to the chaps. Any reason why I shouldn’t tell them the assault happened this afternoon and we know where they all were this afternoon?”

  “No, you can tell them that,” agreed Bord and Lawley went on:

  “And seeing it’s Mr. Staple here who was to identify the man you’re looking for, why, he can come round the place with me. No one’s going to take him for a policeman, no offence meant.”

  Staple chuckled. “That’s a right good idea,” he said. “How about it, Inspector?”

  “All right,” agreed Bord. “You’ll report if any men are missing, Mr. Lawley? And I’ll get Mr. Wharton to give me details of any men who deserted, so to speak, during the past year, left the job without giving notice and didn’t wait for their bonus money.”

  “I’ll give you the details all right,” rejoined Wharton.

  3

  Staple followed Lawley to the big hut which was the men’s recreation room, and Staple found himself stared at by the men who were slouching in their chairs, some of them round the television screen, some reading papers. Lawley spoke up, loud and clear. “There you are, Mr. Staple. You wanted to see how our chaps fill in their spare time. Not so snug as a farmhouse kitchen, maybe, but not bad on the whole, is it?” Staple played up. “Looks champion to me,” he said. “You lads are well of
f, by gum, you are. When I was a young ’un —I’m a farmer as you’ve guessed—I worked on a farm five miles from home, and I had to tramp it, not even a bike, couldn’t afford one. Left home six every morning and lucky if I were back home by eight of an evening. Now you’ve got a heavy job, up here, I know that, but once work’s over, you’ve got no tramping to do.”

  “And they get a decent hot meal,” added Lawley. There was a burst of raucous laughter, and someone shouted: “Wanting a job, Granddad?”

  “Now don’t you go laughing at me,” said Staple. “I’m seventy-six and I’ve done enough work to merit me pension. But if some of the lads says to me, ‘I’m fed up with farming, I’d sooner work on the pipe line, not such long hours’—well, I can tell them they might do worse. Any of you lads ever worked on the land?” he asked.

  “Aye, ’twas a mug’s game too,” put in one big heavy dark tough.

  Staple was sharp enough, despite his age. He counted the men as his eyes went round from chair to chair, table to table. There were thirty-two men in the room.

  “Have you joined the police in your old age, Granddad?” asked one.

  “Don’t you talk silly. I’ve got six acres to farm, and eight head o’ grazing cattle across the valley yonder,” retorted Staple, then he added: “I know what you’re getting at. You saw me in a police car, that it? Well, the Inspector gave me a lift. There’s been a mite of trouble, as you may have heard. A friend of mine, Mr. Brough, he was knocked down this afternoon, over the fell yonder, and seeing as I know the fell side a darned sight better than the Inspector does, I came up here with him to tell him about the fell grazing rights and that—Mr. Brough’s land, that is. And I took the chance of coming up here to see how you lads was fixed.” Lawley intervened here and told them the time Brough had been injured. “Right convenient for the Inspector,” he added cheerfully. “We was all on the job, every man jack of us, as you chaps know.”

  “But that’s not the whole of it,” put in a man at the end of the hut. “They’ve found a stiff in that old farmhouse, haven’t they?”

  “Aye, they have. Been dead for months, I’m told,” said Lawley, “so you needn’t go getting in a flap, Tom Martin. You’ve only been here six weeks, and so’s Thomas. If I was you, I should keep quiet about that and leave it to the police. We’ve got this afternoon sorted out nicely. Now, Mr. Staple, you come and see the small canteen and the sleeping quarters. We’d better hurry, or else the Inspector will be driving off and leaving you to tramp home.”

  “ ’Twouldn’t be the first time I’d tramped over Bowland,” said Staple cheerfully. He followed Lawley into the small canteen, a hut where tea and coffee were served. Eight men were sitting at tables there, playing cards or dominoes, and eight pairs of eyes stared up at Staple, as he said, “Good evening, lads. If I were a few years younger I’d come and cadge a job in this outfit. You look cosy, by gum you do, tea laid on till bedtime: that’d suit me fine.”

  “We do our best,” said Lawley. “Come and look at the cubicles. If the chaps are poorly we’ve got a male nurse to tie ’em up or whatever it is. We get a lot of minor accidents, one way or the other, and if a cut’s looked to and cleaned up, it saves a peck of trouble later.” There were eight men in different cubicles, some lazing on their beds, some mending, some brushing their clothes—a domestic-looking lot, for all their size and toughness.

  “That’s the lot,” said Lawley, closing the last door, and Staple said:

  “Aye. I counted—forty-eight, all told.”

  They went back to the manager’s office and heard Wharton saying, “Tim O’Hallaran, he was only here two weeks, last February, it was. Lawley, do you remember the redheaded Irishman, O’Hallaran?”

  “Aye, I mind him well enough, and a lazy swine he was.”

  “Irishman?” asked Staple.

  “So he said,” replied Lawley. “He was no more an Irishman than I am meself. Lancashire, he was. I knew from ’s speech. Well, if it was a red-polled ne’er-do-well you were after, Mr. Staple, I reckon the fellow who called himself O’Hallaran was your man. But where he is now I can’t say, save that it’s not here. Now you’ll be able to tell the Inspector that all our chaps are in the huts. You’ve seen ’em and you’ve counted ’em.”

  “That’s right, forty-eight of them,” said Staple; “and no trouble at all. I saw all their faces and I know I’ve never seen any o’ them before.”

  “Well, thanks a lot, Mr. Wharton,” said Bord. “We’ve done the job we came to do, and not caused you any trouble, I’m hoping.”

  “No trouble at all, Inspector. You can give our chaps a clean sheet so far as this afternoon is concerned. I admit I’m glad it’s turned out the way it has. I hate having trouble with the gangs and if you get their backs up, the work suffers and everything goes haywire.”

  As Bord and Staple got in the car again and they moved downhill in the grey evening, Staple said: “Well, that’s that. It wasn’t any of that lot downed Brough. The overseers know what they’re talking about.”

  Bord nodded. “Yes, we’ve got to accept their evidence. The next thing to do is to try to get news of Sam Borwick. Perhaps the Leverstone chaps will help us there.”

  “One thing you can be sure of: he won’t show his face in our valley,” said Staple.

  Chapter Nine

  IT WAS DUSK before Macdonald reached home again on that Monday evening (and when he saw the lights gleaming from the windows of Fellcock, he realised how the solitary farmhouse indeed meant “home” to him, his own house, his own land). After leaving Mr. Staple to accompany Bord, Macdonald followed his own devices. He went to see Mrs. Brough, in the guise of sympathetic farming neighbour rather than of police officer, though in Macdonald’s case the two characters often merged into one. Mrs. Brough was a big stout old lady with a magnificent knot of white hair coiled above her plump rosy face. She was a fine upstanding woman, showing no tendency to weep or lament.

  “I’m so very sorry about your husband’s accident,” said Macdonald. “I blame myself for it in a way. I sent him hurrying off, for I hadn’t any idea he wasn’t in the best of health: he always seemed so hale and hearty and vigorous.”

  “True enough,” she replied. “He’s never been one to fuss or make ado about his health, though doctor did warn him to take things quietly, but bless you, what man has any sense that way? But I’m sorry I didn’t stop him going to that house: I knew no good’d come of it. I had a feeling there was trouble there. I’d have said, ‘No, you don’t go inside there, ’tis no business of ours, leave it alone.’ But when he told me you were going there with him, Mr. Macdonald, I thought that’d be all right.”

  “I wish you’d tell me exactly what you mean when you say you had a feeling there was trouble there, Mrs. Brough.”

  “There’d always been trouble in a manner of speaking. Old Nat Borwick was a hard, cruel cheese-paring old skinflint. A proper miser he was. He’d rather see his wife go in rags than allow her a few shillings to get a decent coat to her back. Hid his money, wouldn’t even trust it in the bank in case folks knew what he’d got. And he was hard to that boy, cruel hard. Sam was a rogue, but could you blame him, treated the way he was? Oh, that was a dreadful house, I’ve always said so. And when Sam ran away and old Nat had to give up, I said, ‘A good thing, too. If they’d gone on as they were much longer, heaven knows what might’ve happened.’ He had a good sale at the end, old Nat did. Stock was fetching a good price, and look at the way they’ve lived since in that wretched cottage they’ve got.”

  She broke off and Macdonald put in: “It was known that old Borwick had a good sale. Do you think he hid his money away in High Garth?”

  “Of course he did,” she replied, “and put them bolts and bars across t’ doors, and his old wife without a single decent blanket to keep her warm in winter, a poor thing she was, a bit weak in t’ head if you ask me. And my husband, he was sorry for her. ‘We’ll see to it she gets her rights some time,’ he said. That’s why he was so tak
en with his idea of going up to High Garth, to see that no one had broken in. And I reminded him, ‘Everyone knows old Nat hid his money up there, you be careful lest some say, “You was the first to find it.” And that was when he said, ‘I’ll ask Mr. Macdonald to come with me, and he’ll bear witness there wasn’t anything there shouldn’t have been.’ ”

  “Yes, I understand that,” rejoined Macdonald, “but the only thing your husband mentioned to me was the furniture. He had an idea that Sam Borwick might have been moving some of the furniture and selling it. Mrs. Brough, have you ever heard it said that Sam Borwick has been seen in these parts since he went away?”

  “No one’s ever said they saw him, though plenty’s said: ‘Sam’s had a good look round up there, likely, and if he couldn’t get in t’ house, there’s t’ barn.’ You see, it’s known that some old farmers used to hide their brass in the barn. There was old Tom Grisedale at Hawkeshead. He hid his money in the shippon, under one of the flagstones his bull stood on, and that’s a fact. His wife found it after he died. ‘I knew ’twas there,’ she said. ‘I’ve seen him fussing around there. And what could I do? I daren’t go near the bull, let alone move him.’ ”

  Macdonald laughed. “That was a cunning idea. There wouldn’t be many thieves who would risk moving another man’s bull even to get his brass.”

  “You’re right,” she said. “Never trust a bull, they’ll turn on you one day.”

  “Now there’s another question I’ve got to ask,” went on Macdonald. “After your husband was hurt, Mrs. Shearling said she thought she saw a man on the fell side, and she thought it was one of Mr. Brough’s men, who used to come up to the High Garth shippon when Mr. Brough wintered his beasts there.”

  “Well, she’d got to say summat,” retorted Mrs. Brough acidly, “Jock Shearling was around there himself, wasn’t he? She didn’t want no one to say that Jock was mixed up in this, though I wouldn’t put it past him. Now, about our men, there’s Bob Walton, Jack Metcalf, and Tim Healey— Tim’s an Irishman stayed over from oat harvest Mr. Brough took him on at the hiring fair at Bentham, just for harvest, but when his time was up he asked to stay on and, being a handy fellow with stock, Mr. Brough kept him: used to handling stock, he is.”